PLFantasy

Dealing with the red half of Manchester is easy when you compare the available options to the depth of talent available for City this year. Once you lock Rooney into your team and compliment him with either Nani or Young (likely not both), you are basically left with the decision of grabbing a pricey defender like Evra, a budget defender like Jones or going all in on the front line with Hernandez. Things aren't that simple for City. As with United, let's run through the viable options on offer and then attempt (perhaps with some futility) to apply a ranking to the best Citizens to own for the short-medium term. Man City Goalkeeper / Defenders It's always nice when you start to write something with an idea in mind and then find stats to back up your premise, but it can be equally useful (perhaps even more so) to be so overwhelmed by the evidence that your original proposition is reversed. My impression of the City defense this season was that they remained an elite unit...

A couple of weeks back, we looked at the correlation between shots on goal and goals scored and (unsurprisingly) found a pretty strong link between the two. This ground breaking research probably won't make it into the next Freakonomics book but it might help illustrate players who are getting good looks at goal but not converting their chances. I went on to mess up my explanation of regression to the mean (h/t to mustardking for correcting me) but in essence, while players who have yet to capitalise on a number of shots on target, don't suddenly find themselves 'due' a goal, if a player continues to get in good positions and take good shots, over a period of time we would expect them to score at their historical rate going forward (normally around a goal every three shots on target for elite players). Building on the shots analysis, we can now move onto to trying to predict assists. This is inherently trickier as the inputs we need to use will almost certainly invo...

It seems that the majority of things I have done wrong this season revolve around Fabregas. I have been on the Fabregas band wagon since his stunning appearances in the U-17 World Championship back in 2003 and this sometimes perhaps clouds my judgment. I am therefore only going to make statements below that are based wholly in fact. Arsenal's run in By my calculations, Arsenal don't face a single game from here on in where they are expected to score less than one GPG and only two games (@Tot and @Bla) are less than 1.5 GPG. They have 6 games in which they are expected to score at least 2 goals. Compared to the other top teams, we see Arsenal are very well placed: Expected games scoring 1.5 GPG or less: Arsenal 2 Man United 4 Tottenham 8 Chelsea 8 Man City 9 Expected games scoring 2 GPG or more: Chelsea 8 Arsenal 7 Man Utd 7 Newcastle 6 Tottenham 2 Man City 1 When you consider the fact that Chelsea's goal scoring numbers are massively influenced by their in...

A few readers, along with 23% of all fantasy players have been speculating of late over the virtues of Samir Nasri and while he is indeed having a fine season (67 points, 0.714 aPPMS, 86 aPoints) I am not totally convinced that his fantasy future is as bright. The closest Arsenal have come this year to a full strength side was probably GW5 against Sunderland. That day, Wenger lined up with Song and Wilshere as the holding pair, Arshavin and Nari as the wider forwards, Fabregas in an advanced role and Chamakh up front. Sounds okay so far, however, now bring in Van Persie, one of Arsenal's best players and an every week starter and I have an issue: " We can play Chamakh and Van Persie together. We can play Chamakh up front and van Persie behind . . . What is interesting is we can play all kinds of formations with the two. " (Wenger) So if Van Persie will play; who won't? Let's start with the central pairing. This season Wenger has gone with following pairs: W...

Taking a break from the statistical analysis, lets take a trip around the league and see what managers, players and even pundits are talking about, as we try and glean some concrete information upon which to base our fantasy strategies: Frank Lampard is my new Kaka This one all but confirms Frank's return to my team, with a promotion to default Captain highly likely. For those who don't follow Italian football, here is Kaka's line from last season at Milan: 31 appearances (3 as sub), 16 goals, 9 assists Lampard , in his fantasy leading 226 point season had 12 goals and 10 assists, so the type of production seen above would be outstanding. Of course, I think we all agree that Kaka is a more gifted player but Anelotti's system does promise much and in light of Gerrard's court issues (see below) I think Lampard is the premier player in the league right now. Lampard also converted a penalty against Inter , as if to further underline his fantasy...

Cast you eye over the upcoming fixtures and two teams' schedules stick out as particularly attractive: Arsenal and Everton . Over the next 6 weeks, Everton and Arsenal each have 5 green rated fixtures, with the average goals per game conceded by their opposition coming in at 1.69 ( Everton ) and 1.56 (Arsenal). With that in mind, the following attacking options become very interesting buys this week: Arsenal Denilson - the cheapest of the big name midfielders (6.2) has had a decent season, though his last 5 games have seen him contribute just 13 points. With 5 assists and 3 goals for the season, along with a much improved defense, mean that Denilson could be a decent, and steady (16 straight starts) point contributor in the next month or so. Nasri - the highest potential scorer in midfield is a bit overpriced (7.6m) and I would not generally suggest buying him ahead of similarly priced studs like Cahill and Ireland. Considering Cahill's recent advanced role and comparably...

Back on October 4 th I made a few recommendations of players to buy to make a capital gain over the coming weeks. The 'portfolio' saw initial success, but a month on it is time to look at the players and see how they've performed. I will then make some more predictions for the coming weeks. Portfolio performance Here's the tips I made back on October 4 th :Not too shabby at all (especially in today's economic climate). I would have removed the sell rating on Bent a couple of weeks ago too, and in fact he's on the shortlist to be a buy at the moment (as first noted by blog reader SilentJay ). Of course, at premierleague .com you only realise half the price rise as profit, but still, its over a million made in a month that could make the difference between a Sol Campbell and a Gael Clichy , or a Joe Hart and a Pepe Reina. Of the above tips I think Ronaldo has perhaps a small margin to rise, so I consider him a hold. I think Zaki ha reached his ceiling for now...

Everton v Fulham No regular first teamers are out for either side. Everton players are a good bet this week with Fulham not travelling too well this year (only 2 goals in 4 games scored). The impressive Fulham defense is less so on the road having failed to keep a clean sheet so far. One to watch: Tim Cahill Chelsea v Sunderland Carvalho is back on the sidelines and could be out for up to three weeks. This makes Alex (5.6) an interesting prospect once more with Sunderland at home this week and decent fixtures after that (@Bla, @WH, New). Ballack and Drogba are also sidelined, though there is a chance Cole could return. If you own him for some reason I'd probably keep him out for one more week. Craig Gordon is also a doubt though you want to avoid him anyway in what should be a win for the home side. One to watch: Alex Man Utd v Hull Hargreaves and Scholes are still out which means Carrick, Fletcher and Anderson will battle it our for playing time. I wouldn't suggest that any o...

I've never really considered capital growth as a legitimate reason to invest in a fantasy player, but with the current credit crunch caused by the arrival of Ronaldo , I decided to take a look at those players whose value may increase over the next few weeks. The latest premierleague .com pundit article suggests a couple of players who may be undervalued at this point (Alex, Keane and Bentley). I agree with Alex and have indeed bought him for my team. However, I am neutral on Keane and downright opposed to the suggestion of Bentley. I've set out some ideas for those players whose value looks set to rise/fall over the next few weeks: Ronaldo ( CRON ) is now held by 15.2% of all players but his value has only increased by 0.1. If he has another big week this week you can bet people will be reaching for the wildcard and his value will increase rapidly. Zaki ( AZAK ) has had by far the biggest gain in all of fantasy football and is now owned by 29% of all players. However, at 6...